Hot Buttered Yum (16 page)

Roni watched the indecision flash through his eyes. Why had she stepped around that corner?

“She’s playing the piano for the contest I’m doing.” He turned back to his daughter. “You remember I said I was here for a contest? And she’s really good.”

Innocent blue eyes grew wide and round and the girl sucked in a dramatic breath. “I love the piano, Daddy.”

Lucas nodded. “I know. Maybe I can get her to show me how to play something and I’ll come home and show you.”

The small face grew larger on screen until it took up the whole thing. “Could she come here and show me how to play?”

Roni’s heart thumped hard. She should just leave. She didn’t need to see Lucas’s kid.

“I don’t think—”

“I have my own piano.” The words were spoken a bit too loud, as if the child were no longer speaking to Lucas, but trying to talk around him.

Roni peeked back up. She’d dropped her gaze to the ground. Lucas was watching her again, this time with an odd expression on his face.

“Did my Daddy tell you? I haf my own piano, but I haven’t got the lessons yet. What’s your name?”

Fear kept Roni’s feet from moving. She wanted to run, but Lucas was watching her. He nodded his head just the slightest amount toward the laptop. As if suggesting to Roni that she should speak to his daughter.

She opened her mouth and moved her lips but nothing came out.

“Her name is Roni.” Lucas scooted back so that he wasn’t between the computer and Roni and motioned in introduction. “Roni, this is Gracie.”

Roni’s throat squeezed shut as if someone were choking her. She shifted her gaze back to Lucas and he nodded once again toward the computer.

The smile she forced to her face felt brittle. “Hello Gracie,” she eked out. She cleared her throat and tried to wipe the panic from her voice. “It’s nice to meet you.”

The child’s face bounced up and down. “I love meeting Daddy’s friends. The boys at his work think I’m cute. He doesn’t work with much girls though.”

Did that mean he just didn’t introduce his daughter to girls? Yet he hadn’t turned the computer away when Gracie had seen her. Heck, he could have said she was a maid. End of discussion.

But he hadn’t.

Roni took a step toward the desk.

Gracie’s head bobbed again. “Could you teach me to play the piano? Daddy gots me one for my birthday, but I don’t know how to play.”

Roni looked at Lucas then. He wore a chagrined expression, as if he’d been caught lacking as a father. “How about I talk to your Dad? Maybe I can help him find someone to teach you to play.”

“Will you?” Her words were breathless again. “Then I’ll show my new puppy how to play too.”

“Gracie,” Lucas butted in. “We’re going to talk about the dog situation after I get home.”

“Okay, Daddy.” Gracie turned her blue eyes back to Roni. “I love
Lady and the Tramp
,” she said. “It’s my favoritist movie. I’m going to name my dog Lady.”

A chuckle escaped Roni at the miserable look on Lucas’s face. If she had to guess, the man was soon going to own a dog.

“Do you have a dog?” the girl asked. The child certainly wasn’t shy.

“I don’t. Because they’re a whole bunch of responsibility. And I’m not sure I’m ready yet.” There. Maybe that would help.

The small face in front of her—Roni glanced around and realized that she was now standing within feet of the computer—scrunched up in concentration. “Does your Daddy not let you have one either?”

Oh geez, this child was too precious.

“Gracie,” Lucas cut in again. He swung back around so Gracie could see him more clearly, which put his shoulder resting flush against Roni’s hip. “How about you say good-bye to Miss Roni, now? Okay? It’s time for Grandma to get you your breakfast.”

An older lady suddenly appeared behind Gracie. She had the same blue eyes.

Roni’s pulse fluttered in her throat. Lucas’s mom was staring at her. In his hotel room. While she talked to his daughter.

How had this happened?

The next couple of minutes passed in a haze. Roni thought she said good-bye to Gracie, but she couldn’t be sure, and then Lucas swiveled around in his chair and looked up at her.

She turned and fled to the other room.

“Roni, come on.” Lucas said behind her.

By the time he caught her in the bedroom, she was working furiously, trying desperately to shimmy into her jeans. The sides of the robe kept getting in her way and she shoved at them so she could see to fasten her pants.

Lucas held out his hand. “Come sit with me. Let’s talk.”

She took a step back. “You have a kid,” she said, stating the obvious.

He nodded slowly as if to a child. “I do.”

Roni bit down on the inside of her jaw. Now that the call had been disconnected, the confusion had flooded back in. She didn’t get involved with men who had kids. “I don’t understand,” she whispered.

They were supposed to just be having fun. An easy, casual thing. A fling.

But he had a kid.

How did someone with a kid do casual? Or did they?

“Her mother isn’t in her life. She and I never married,” Lucas explained patiently. He held out his hand again. “Let’s talk.”

He was not only a dad, but a single father, raising his kid alone.
Sonofagun
. He was going to make her want more without doing anything but being a good guy.

Roni shook her head when he took another step toward her. She could feel her hair swishing back and forth, her damp curls brushing against her cheeks. “I need to go.”

“We need to talk.”

“No. I need …” Crap, she didn’t know what she needed. She shot her gaze around the room, not seeing anything that made sense. Could she reverse the last twelve hours? No, thirty-six. She should never have gone outside with him at Gin’s the other night. Wait. The kiss. She shouldn’t have kissed him under the deck.

Oh, geez.

“Roni,” Lucas’s tone was a mix of stern and pleading. “It’s just a daughter. It doesn’t change anything here.”

“I know.” But that wasn’t true. She lifted a hand toward her face but didn’t know what to do with it so it just hung there. She saw him differently now. He wasn’t just a good time. He was a dad. “I’ve got to go.”

“We’ll talk tonight,” he told her.

She stared at him, at the solemn look on his face, and wondered why she’d ever thought he was the carefree type. When she’d met him, he’d been working so hard he’d tuned out anything and everything around him. When she’d ignored him after they kissed, instead of moving on to the next girl, he’d patiently sought her out.

And he lived in a subdivision, for crying out loud.

All the signs had been there.

Her chest ached as if it was being crushed. These were not the habits of a carefree guy.

“Tonight,” he reiterated. “After we finish at the convention center. We’ll talk then.”

She nodded. She supposed they should talk. But she needed some time to think first. Time to grieve the ending of a really hot fling. “Okay. We’ll talk tonight.”

No way were they going to talk tonight. Every time she got alone with him she found herself with diarrhea of the mouth. She didn’t trust herself not to open up and tell him even more about herself. Or ask even more about him.

But neither of those things needed to happen because they were done. He had a kid.

And she didn’t.

“Nothing here has to change,” he repeated.

“I got that.”

She grabbed the remainder of her clothes from where they were draped over the chair and hurried to the bathroom. It was probably ridiculous to cut a wide berth around him, but that didn’t stop her from doing it.

She closed herself up in the room and leaned back against the door, her clothes held tight to her chest. She stared at the toiletries, glanced at the shower, where she’d already made plans to have her way with him next, then closed her eyes and pictured the fair skin and fine brown curls of his daughter.

He was wrong.

Everything here had changed.

Because seeing Gracie had cracked open a hole she’d superglued shut three years ago.

“Can you believe they have us milking goats?”

Lucas ignored Kelly’s words. He wasn’t in the mood to talk. Hadn’t been all day.

They were standing slightly apart from the rest of the group while two other contestants made their way through the gladiator-type course, heading for the goats at the end.

Kelly stood next to him, leaned back against the barn with his arms crossed over his chest, leg bent at the knee, and his foot propped on the weathered wood beside his other knee. Stick a cowboy hat on him and a piece of straw between his teeth and he’d be the picture of a romance book hero.

Lucas stood, arms locked over his chest, scowling at the ground. The brooding hero, he supposed.

More like the pissed-off reject.

Roni was avoiding him again.

He knew this though they hadn’t made it to the end of the day yet, at which time they were supposed to have a talk. Not for a single second had she looked his way throughout the morning … and now, not throughout the afternoon. Furthermore, he suspected that, come the end of the evening, she would be nowhere to be found.

He wanted to go to her and demand she talk to him. Now.

He couldn’t get the picture out of his mind of her practically running from his bedroom, as if the sight of his daughter was the most nauseating thing she’d ever seen.

“They’d better not ask us to drink it, is all I’m saying.” Kelly muttered.

Again, Lucas ignored him.

And really. The look on Roni’s face had been more disgust than anything.

It was a daughter, for heaven’s sake. Not a two-headed cow he was keeping in his bedroom as a pet.

And then that escape attempt she’d tried to maneuver after she’d come back out of the bathroom. A low growl came from the back of his throat. She’d intended to run out of his hotel room and not even let him take her home. He didn’t do things that way.

“Now if
that
was at the end of the course …” Kelly spoke under his breath. “I would have no problem doing
whatever
she asked.”

Lucas lifted his head from staring at his boots. “What are you rattling about now?”

But Kelly didn’t have to answer. Lucas saw what he was talking about. Roni stood about fifty feet away, her back to them.

Her arms were propped across the top rung of a fence, one foot hooked on a lower slat, and the position pulled her shirt snug across her back so that the slope of her body and dip at the base of her spine was molded perfectly under the material. Below the shirt was another amazing pair of jeans. Almost as good as the ones he’d peeled off of her the night before.

“I’m just saying,” Kelly added, “that if she needed milking …”

Lucas slowly turned his head to his friend. He lowered his arms to his sides and clenched his fists. He’d known Kelly a long time, and didn’t want to kill a friendship by breaking the other man’s pretty nose.

If the man didn’t rely on his nose to get him jobs, however …

“You might want to lay off,” Lucas spoke slow and careful, his tone menacing.

Kelly merely smiled. “That’s what I thought,” he said.

“
What
is what you thought?” Irritation seeped in with the anger that had been steadily building all day.

“You and the piano player.”

Lucas eyed his friend.

“After the dancing last night, I can’t say I’m surprised. But I am impressed.”

Three breaths in and out didn’t help matters much. “So what? You think it’s your turn next?”

Kelly laughed loud enough that Roni peeked at them over her shoulder. When Lucas met her gaze, she quickly turned back around.

“No, you idiot,” Kelly stated. He pushed off the side of the barn and stood straight, feet shoulder-width apart. “And even if I wanted to head down that road, I don’t want to take you on. That would get ugly for both of us.” He jabbed Lucas in the arm. “But I do want to hear about it. I mean, other than from some loser at the bar.”

Lucas came away from the barn himself. “What are you talking about?”

“The idiot valet. He came into the hotel bar last night after he was off the clock. He was too young to buy a drink, but that didn’t stop him from standing around, running his mouth about how one of the “older” contestants and a cute, short sexy thing had been all over each other. I suspected Roni, given how short she is, and your ugly mug came to mind when he mentioned an old man. Plus, I knew it wouldn’t be long before you’d at least
try
to get some of that.”

Lucas stared at his friend, his mood not improving. Might have known the jerk valet would embellish things to make it even worse. “We were
not
all over each other,” Lucas muttered. “What else did he say?”

Kelly smirked. “That you couldn’t stand straight when you got out of the car.”

The first smile Lucas had produced since that morning cracked over his lips. “That part was true.”

“Heard a couple murmurs this morning, too, that she’d been seen heading through the lobby on the way out the door. Said you were barely keeping up with her, she was moving so fast. What happened? She wake up and realize what she’d done?”

Lucas smirked. “No, you jackass. She woke up and wanted more.”

Before she’d run.

He went silent as he thought about the conversation they’d had in the quiet of the morning. He’d enjoyed the moments of talking, had enjoyed hearing about her years with her dad. He still didn’t get how she’d just walked away from that.

Then she’d asked if they were being casual. As if to make sure he remembered the rules.

Of course they were being casual.

He didn’t bring women into Gracie’s life. If her own mother wouldn’t stay, why would anyone else?

“What is it?” Kelly asked.

It may have been a couple years since the two of them had spent a lot of time together, but that didn’t mean he and Kelly weren’t still good enough friends to know when the other was working through a situation.

Lucas lifted his shoulders and rolled them toward his back, stretching out his joints until they popped. He twisted his neck in a similar fashion, then faced his longtime friend.

“She saw Gracie,” he admitted.

Kelly’s easy manner disappeared in an instant. “Gracie is here? Is she okay?”

“No. I mean, Roni
found out
about her. Well, no, she saw her. Talked to her. Through Skype.”

“She talked to her?”

Lucas nodded. He felt sick to his stomach. He looked across the field to where Roni remained, her back and cute ass still facing their direction. He’d never let a woman he’d slept with talk to his daughter. “Gracie called this morning and I was talking to her …” He paused, silently chiding himself for not getting off the call sooner. Even worse was his encouraging conversation between the two. “I didn’t hear Roni come out of the shower.”

Kelly’s gaze scrutinized Lucas. “And what? The two just struck up a conversation?”

“Not at first. But then Gracie saw her standing on the other side of the room.” Lucas shrugged as if it had been out of his hands at that point. He could have lied about who Roni was. He should have turned the computer away. “You know how Gracie can be.”

Kelly nodded. From the minute Gracie had learned to talk, she hadn’t figured out how to stop. She could ask nonstop questions for hours on end. And if she wasn’t asking questions, she was sharing things. Like, “I want a dog,” “I have a piano,” or “My dad hasn’t gotten me piano lessons yet.”

Which was simply because she was too young. He probably shouldn’t have bought her the piano.

Only, she’d been through so much. He’d wanted to give her whatever she’d asked for. And of the two things she’d requested for her birthday—a piano and a mother—the piano was the one he could manage.

“What did they say to each other?” Kelly asked.

Lucas closed his eyes as he replayed the few minutes his daughter had been talking to Roni. Roni had been hesitant to speak with her at first. In fact, she’d looked terrified at the thought of it. But then she’d moved across the room and come closer. And then she’d smiled.

His stomach turned into a hard knot.

As Gracie had been going on and on about wanting a dog, Roni had eased into the moment. She’d appeared to be enjoying herself. And she’d looked at his daughter as if Gracie had mattered. As if she was just a normal kid.

A kid anyone could love.

Then she’d run from the room and accused him of being a father in such a way as to imply the fact could start a chain reaction that would lead to the end of the world as they knew it.

“Lucas?” Kelly nudged his elbow into Lucas’s, bringing him back from the recesses of his mind. “What happened? Did you tell her about the leukemia?”

Lucas jerked back. “Of course I didn’t tell her about the leukemia. That isn’t who Gracie is. It doesn’t define her.”

“I didn’t mean it did. I was just …” Kelly stopped talking and held up his hands.

Kelly and his wife, Becky, had been the ones who’d been there for him during the worst of it. As well as Lucas’s parents. Chemo was not an easy thing for anyone. It was brutal.

Kelly scrubbed a hand across his jaw and wore an apologetic grimace. “You looked like something had happened,” he finally said. “Leukemia was just a guess.”

Lucas shook his head. “I don’t tell people about that.”

Hell, as a rule, he didn’t tell people about Gracie. Period. Not the people in his modeling world.

And certainly not out-of-town hookups.

He shook his head again, aware that the time he’d spent with Roni had felt suspiciously like more than an out-of-town hookup. He wanted to simply be in the same room with her—whether she was ignoring him or not. He wanted to make her smile, to wipe away the faint sadness he occasionally caught in her eyes.

He wanted to kiss her.

He wanted to know why his daughter scared her to death.

Focusing on her now, his eyes traced over the outline she made against the fence. She appeared casual and relaxed, as if she were enjoying herself. But he noted how her elbows were tucked in front of her on the fence and her arms crossed tight over each other, each hand grasping the opposite elbow. Also, she stood by herself, away from everyone else.

She was tiny to begin with, but he realized that she often made herself even more so.

As if she felt alone.

Was she lonely?

A spot burned inside him and began to spread.

He ran a hand through his hair.
He
was lonely.

“Of course I didn’t tell her,” he grumbled. He forced himself to take his eyes off Roni. “She’ll never meet Gracie, anyway. So it doesn’t matter.”

“Are you sure?”

Lucas stared at his friend, unblinking, as a question flashed through his mind as clear as if it were painted in bright neon red. Could he let Roni meet Gracie in person?

No.

But his blood surged through him so quickly, so fiercely, that he felt as if his insides trembled with the gush.

He shook his head. No. He couldn’t introduce his … whatever Roni was … to his daughter. It wasn’t right. He didn’t do that. But at the same time, more questions spun through his head.

What if he did?

Would Gracie become too attached if a “friend” happened to stop by?

Would his mother look at him like she knew what he was up to? Would she be disappointed in him if she did?

He glanced once more at Roni.

Could he even talk her into a trip to Dallas?

Before he could figure out the answer to any of the questions, a goat screamed, the noise sounding disturbingly human, and both men cringed. They looked at the pen where one of the guys was sitting on a stool beside the animal. His partner was trying to explain how to milk the goat, and apparently the process was not going well. Nor were the goat’s rear legs shy about kicking.

Lucas shifted his gaze to the woman chosen for him today. She was twenty-five, looked about fifteen, and stood with the other women in a clump on the other side of the pen. The women had been shown how to milk the animals earlier in the day, while the guys hadn’t been allowed in the barn. When it came time to do the deed, the women had to talk the men through it. They couldn’t show them, and they couldn’t help them. Only explain with words.

The goat kicked out once again and the metal bucket underneath the frustrated animal rolled to its side. The thin dribble of milk that had managed to be retrieved trailed in a narrow path over the rim and dropped to the dirt below.

Kelly wore a grin. “Twenty bucks says he’s done tonight.”

“I am
not
taking that bet,” Lucas said.

The goat kicked once more, then got away from the contestant. They’d apparently forgotten to secure her collar to the platform.

The owner stepped in to retrieve the animal and the moment passed. Lucas found himself standing shoulder to shoulder with Kelly, neither man talking. He wanted to explain how he’d watched Roni and Gracie that morning, and how he’d found himself wanting more. How he’d worried every day for the last three years that Gracie didn’t have a mom to grow up with.

She had a grandmother. That’s the reason Lucas had moved back to Dallas. He wanted his daughter to grow up close to her grandparents, but more importantly, to at least have one female influence in her life.

But as he’d watched Roni standing in a bathrobe, her hair wet and cheeks flushed, talking to his daughter … for the first time he’d admitted to himself that he wanted more. More for himself. And more for Gracie.

It didn’t mean he could get it.

But he wanted it.

“She’s pretty special,” Kelly said.

Lucas had no idea if he meant Gracie or Roni. Didn’t matter. The answer was the same.

He nodded as he watched Roni raise her hands and clap for the poor guy who’d finally gotten a decent stream of milk coming from the goat. “Yeah,” he said. Something tightened behind his ribs. “She is.”